


Fixer Upper

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Handyman AU, based on a note on notapepper's brilliant fic tbh, just honestly this is gonna be a fluffy little mess, that's how out of control I am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5733646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma's lease just so happens to be up right around the time that Skye and her live-in boyfriend have a particularly bitter breakup. Despite not living together since college, they decide to get a place together. </p><p>Before Jemma even moves in, Skye decides that Jemma and the building's handyman Leo Fitz would make a very cute couple. </p><p>Jemma is entirely unprepared for the destruction her roommate is willing to inflict to get her a date. She's even less prepared for the damage that she's willing to do to be near Fitz. </p><p>A Handyman AU based on a note notapepper's And A Happy Nude Year</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notapepper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notapepper/gifts).



> So basically this whole fic got inspired by a single note in notapepper's And A Happy Nude Year. In it, she wrote that Fitz is doing so many chores in the fic because she has a thing for a handyman Fitz. 
> 
> And so then this was born, from both that note and from the MASSIVE crush my roommate had on our handyman. For two straight years. 
> 
> I promise this isn't a massive undertaking like most of my other fics. This will be either 2 or 3 chapters. I'm still deciding how to divide up the rest of it. But here's the first bit :)

[1. Move-In Day]

 

“You’re going to _love_ the maintenance guy,” Skye says as Jemma hauls in yet another box from the curb. Even covered in sweat and dust, Jemma can’t help but raise her eyebrows in amusement.

 

“What did you manage to break before I even got here?” Jemma teases. “And I suppose he must be good at his job, as I can’t seem to find any catastrophic damage.”

 

“That hole in our dorm wall wasn’t completely my fault,” Skye defends, but even she knows it’s weak. Her practically-adoptive-father Phil had bought her a Wii for Christmas that year. Despite Jemma (and the instruction manual’s) strict instructions, Skye had shirked the provided wrist-strap and flung the controller at the wall while she rather violently played Dancing with the Stars.

 

At the time, Jemma had been glad that it had only narrowly missed her head as she studied for her American history exam. When they’d received their damages bill at the end of the year, she had not been so glad. That had been ages ago. After a particularly rough breakup with her live-in boyfriend, Skye had needed a roommate to afford a place on her own. Jemma’s lease on her tiny studio apartment had just expired, so they’d found a fairly affordable place in their favorite part of town.

 

Living together at 26 is distinctly different than when they’d been a couple of silly college girls, but at least one thing hasn’t changed; Skye is, apparently, continuing to throw Jemma at anything with a penis and a pulse.

 

“Besides, it was the microwave,” Skye continues. She presses a button the appliance in question and it pops open, asserting her point. “It wouldn’t open.”

 

“And why am I going to love this microwave doctor?” Jemma asks, still amused by her roommate. “Let me guess. He was wearing blue and blue is my favorite color, so we _must_ be made for each other.”

 

Skye scoffs. “Please, Jemma. You’d be the world’s worst matchmaker.”

 

“Do we need to revisit the last date you set me up on?” Jemma asks warningly. Skye cringes at the thought. Perhaps Joey hadn’t been the best choice—but to be fair, Skye hadn’t a clue that Joey was batting for the other team.

 

“I’m just saying, he seems like your type,” Skye says innocently, holding her hands up in surrender. Her face scrunches up and she reconsiders. “Okay, maybe not _quite_ your type, but maybe you need a little not-your-type.”

 

“If he’s so great why don’t _you_ go for it?” Jemma asks as she rips the tape off of a box labeled “Kitchen.” She and Skye work in tandem, putting mugs and plates into the cabinets that Jemma had already labeled with painter’s tape. The organization of a kitchen was incredibly important; everything needed to be located in an intuitive and well-thought out location. It was one of Jemma’s quirks that Skye had been putting up with for years.

 

Mugs, of course, went above the side-by-side electric kettle and coffee pot (Jemma’s and Skye’s, respectively). Glasses go in the cabinet just to the left of the fridge, and plates are positioned conveniently close to the dishwasher, for quick unloading.

 

“Honestly? I’d thought about it,” Skye says, crinkling her face. “But then I figured it might be a good time to be single.”

 

“You haven’t ever done much of that,” Jemma teases lightly, and Skye bumps her lightly as she moves past to put a set of bowls away.

 

“And you’ve done way too much of it,” Skye tells her. Jemma scoffs and continues working, but Skye isn’t quite ready to drop it. “You work so much and when you’re not working, you pretty much only hang out with me.”

 

“That’s not true! I have friends at work!”

 

“Are you talking about that middle aged man we ran into at the bar?” Skye asks incredulously. “Because if you recall, he called you _Doctor Simmons._ On a _Friday night_ at freaking _karaoke.”_

“My lack of a social life doesn’t mean that I need a romantic relationship,” Jemma replies haughtily.

 

“It does mean you probably haven’t gotten laid in a long time,” Skye jokes. Jemma remains silent and Skye narrows her eyes. “Oh, come on. How long?”

 

“That’s neither here nor there, Skye.”

 

“Jemma…”

 

“Nearly a year,” Jemma blurts out, cheeks flushing. “Forgive me for being a bit too busy trying to find a cure for cancer.”

 

Skye says nothing, and the silence creeps up on Jemma and raises her suspicions. Skye is never quiet, and especially not in a conversation about Jemma’s personal life. A sudden loud bang, followed by a crash, sounds through their new, still fairly empty, apartment.

 

Skye stands near the kitchen sink, holding a drawer in her hand. The tracks it slides on in order to function look mangled inside of the now empty space where the drawer had been.

 

“Oops,” Skye says innocently. Jemma knows better, though. “Guess we’ve gotta call maintenance.”

 

“Can’t this wait until we’ve finished unpacking the kitchen?” Jemma sighs, exasperated. “I already got a bit of a late start as it is. Garrett was being a pain about my move out inspection.”

 

“Sure,” Skye shrugs casually. “But I mean—that was the silverware drawer.”

 

Jemma grits her teeth and her hands clench onto the countertop in front of her. Skye knows exactly how to push her buttons. Jemma can’t just leave the kitchen, the most important room really, without it being entirely unpacked. She won’t catch a wink of sleep tonight and she just knows she’ll end up trying to fix it herself and make it worse. Judging by the victorious grin on her face, Skye knows it too.

 

“Call maintenance.”

 

Skye immediately picks up her phone and finds the number in her recent calls, grinning when the heavily accented voice answers.

 

“Hi Fitz,” she says apologetically. It’s a good thing he can’t see her, because she looks anything but sorry. “My roommate just got here and we were setting up the kitchen and I accidentally ripped a drawer out of the cabinets.”

 

She pauses, listening to his response. Jemma paces into the living room and tilts her head at the furniture arrangement. Skye had moved in most of the large furniture the day before with the help of her close friend Lincoln (although Jemma secretly wonders how long it’ll be before Lincoln is a frequent overnight guest). She puts her hands on her hips, looking for something that she can work on.

 

She wipes her dusty hands on her worn-out jeans and adjusts the bandana she’s tied around her hair. Skye can call her Rosie the Riveter all she wants, but at least she doesn’t have pieces of hair stuck to the sweat on her face like her roommate does.

 

She overhears the end of Skye’s phone conversation. “No, all the track thingies are all bent out of shape? I don’t think we’re strong enough to fix them.”

 

Jemma rolls her eyes. She’s seen Skye at a gym—Jemma may be the voice of reason, but Skye has always been the muscle.

 

“Thanks so much! Apartment 9. Although I’m sure you know that, you were just here.”

 

When Skye says the apartment number, Jemma jumps. “Oh! I got us something. It’s a bit silly and you can take it down if you’d like—“

 

Skye smiles fondly. “Just put whatever it is up, Jemma.”

 

Jemma digs through a nearby box, labeled “Décor—Living Area” and emerges with a wooden sign. Skye grins as soon as she sees it.

 

“Oh my God, Jemma, that is _perfect,”_ Skye gushes. She rushes forward to grab onto it. “Platform 9 and Three Quarters.”

 

“I couldn’t resist,” Jemma smiles a bit sheepishly. “When we first checked this place out and we applied, I ordered it on Etsy.”

 

“You’re so damn cute,” Skye says fondly, putting down the sign to give her a quick hug. She’s cut short by a sharp rap on the door and her smile only grows. “Be prepared to get your socks knocked off.”

 

She swings the door open and greets the maintenance guy, apparently named Fitz.

 

“I think you’re going to end up beating Mike Peterson in Number 12 for most broken apartment,” a Scottish accent rings out. Jemma spins around in surprise, having been unprepared to hear it.

 

“Oh I met Mike yesterday,” Skye says conversationally. “Seems like a nice guy.”

 

“He’s very nice,” Fitz agrees. “Just can’t seem to figure out which end of a hammer he’s supposed to use.”

 

Jemma stands, completely still, in the living room. The man is slight in build, a few inches taller than her, with messy curls and bright blue eyes. He wears a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a toolbox in one hand. Skye’s right—he isn’t _quite_ her usual type, but there’s something about him that attracts her attention immediately. She wonders if it’s just Skye’s enthusiasm for the idea.

 

“This is my roommate, Jemma,” Skye introduces. “Jemma, this is Fitz.”

 

“Hi,” Jemma practically squeaks out. He smiles at her easily.

 

“Poor thing, having this one as a roommate,” he teases. He enters the kitchen and looks at the damage. “How the hell did you manage to do this?”

 

“Inhuman levels of strength?” Skye suggests.

 

“I think she was really just trying to quell my over-organizing,” Jemma jumps in. Fitz takes a look around the kitchen as he kneels down in front of where the drawer should be.

 

“This had to have been the drawer for the forks and stuff,” he says as he pulls out a pair of pliers to bend the metal tracking back into shape.

 

“Yes!” Jemma exclaims, a bit too enthusiastically. “The organization of the kitchen is so important. It really—“

 

“—cuts down on time,” he talks over her. He cringes slightly, looking over his shoulder at her. “Sorry. Bad habit.”

 

Skye snorts gracelessly. “Please, Jemma is _always_ trying to finish someone’s sentence before they can do it themselves.”

 

“It’s not on purpose!” Jemma defends.

 

“I totally get that,” Fitz commiserates as he angles the drawer back into place. He stands and clicks his toolbox shut. “Alright, ladies, looks like you’re all set here.”

 

“And you live in the building, right?” Jemma asks suddenly. It seems to take him a bit off-guard. If Skye’s reaction is anything to go by, Jemma was a bit too eager in her tone.

 

“Yeah, I do. Just above you actually, Apartment 19.”

 

His eyes fall on the sign, leaned against the wall on the floor.

 

“Platform Nine and Three Quarters!” he cheers. “That’s a great sign you’ve got there.”

 

“It’s Jemma’s,” Skye interjects.

 

“What’s your House?” Fitz asks her, lips quirked upward.

 

“Ravenclaw,” Jemma replies immediately. “And yours?”

 

He shrugs, scratching at the back of his head. “My friend Bobbi says I’m Gryffindor but I say I’m more of a Hufflepuff.”

 

“Well what does the official quiz tell you?” Jemma asks. “And if you haven’t taken the official quiz then I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation.”

 

Unlike most people she talks to, he seems to get that she’s kidding around with him. He barks out a laugh.

 

“You caught me. The Pottermore test says I’m a Gryffindor but it always feels like a cop-out to say that.”

 

“Because _everyone_ says they’re a Gryffindor,” Jemma agrees. Skye just watches them, leaning against the couch with a wide grin on her face. The phone in Fitz’s pocket rings rather shrilly and he cringes.

 

“Emergency maintenance phone. Try not to go burning this whole place down, would you?”

 

Jemma knows the question is probably meant for Skye, given that she’s the one who keeps breaking things, but his eyes stay on her.

 

“I’ll do my best to keep her in line,” she says. He winks at her with a little thumbs up. She can’t help but laugh at the awkward gesture and he cringes before he says his final goodbye and leaves.

 

Jemma doesn’t even want to look in Skye’s direction when the door closes behind him, but she’s suddenly a mere inch or so from Jemma’s face. She pokes her cheek.

 

“ _Told_ you,” Skye boasts. “You’re blushing.”

 

Jemma doesn’t dignify it with a response.

 

[2. Two Weeks After Move-In]

 

Jemma’s just getting out of the shower when she hears the front door open. Skye greets someone cheerily and Jemma glances down at her towel in dismay. There’s no way to get to her bedroom without passing through the common area. Skye has a bad habit of inviting people over without telling her, but she figures it must be her friend from work, Hunter.

 

He’s a bit of a flirt but Jemma’s comfortable with him, so she supposes it’s not the end of the world if he sees her in a towel. It’s not as though she’s naked.

 

“Hey Jemma, I gotta go to Hunter’s!” Skye calls out just as Jemma opens the door. She collides with Fitz, who stands with his little toolbox in a different colored flannel than the first one she’d seen. “Oh hey perfect, there you are.”

 

“Fitz!” Jemma breathes. “What are you—why are you here?”

 

Fitz’s eyes fly toward the ceiling, cheeks pink. “Skye said there’s an issue with the washing machine.”

 

“Would you mind showing him?” Skye asks in a voice that would be innocent if Jemma didn’t know her better than that.

 

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Jemma says to her, teeth gritted. Skye just smiles back, grabbing her keys and heading for the door.

 

“I’m sure you two will figure it out. Bye!”

 

“Well, um, I can show you the washer?” Jemma asks uncertainly. She clutches her towel tightly around herself, acutely aware of how awful her hair looks when it’s wet.

 

He snorts. “I know this building like the back of my hand. I know where your washer is.”

 

Jemma nods, gesturing awkwardly to her bedroom door. “Alright then. I’m going to just—I’m going to put on some clothes.”

 

“Yeah you should do that,” he says, then freezes. “I mean it’s _your_ apartment. You could be naked if you want. But I’m also here. Not that your—not that your nudity _bothers_ me.”

 

Jemma looks away from him just as he diverts his attention to a particularly interesting spot on the white-painted wall.

 

“Shall I then?”

 

Fitz grunts and does an about-face, heading for the washer. She dresses quickly. Jemma supposes that of course, she could just stay in her room until he leaves. That’s what she’d always done with her affable but somewhat uncomfortable maintenance guy at her other building. She runs a brush through her hair and slides into her most comfortable pair of jeans and a well-worn t-shirt.

 

Channeling her inner-Skye, she decides to forego a bra.

 

It seems to have the intended affect. He glances over when he hears her shuffle toward the small laundry room just off of the kitchen and jumps up so fast he hits his head on the open dryer door above him.

 

He groans, slapping his hands over his forehead. “Ah, fuck.”

 

“Oh!” Jemma exclaims. “Sit, sit, please. Let me take a look at you.”

 

“I’m fine, really.”

 

She steps into his space regardless, crowding him in the tiny laundry room. His back is to the wall, her cold hands brushing over his forehead, and he suddenly looks as though he wants to die.

 

She steps back, hands flying away from him. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That was inappropriate. I’m told I sometimes have—well, I’m not the best with boundaries.”

 

She winces apologetically and waves her hands around. “I’m a doctor. Well, sort of. So I just—yes. Okay. I’ll leave you to—to fix that.”

 

“You could—I mean, I could actually kind of use a hand. I’ve gotta get back there and I won’t be able to reach my tools.”

 

“I could do that,” Jemma offers. “Just hand you things.”

 

“Thanks,” he smiles, crawling into the small space behind the washing machine. “Y’know, this is probably the only time in my life that being small has been a good thing.”

 

“Small? I think you’re rather well-formed and symmetrical, actually,” Jemma muses. She’s glad he can’t see her face; she flinches, scrunching up her whole face. “I think I’ve just run into a boundary again, haven’t I?”

 

He laughs warmly. “No, no it’s—that’s nice of you to say. I don’t think I’ve ever been called well-formed _or_ symmetrical before, let alone both at once.”

 

Jemma laughs, part-relieved and part-awkward. “Yes, well. Someone should have, at some point.”

 

“Seems ridiculous to me now that nobody did. Can you hand me the Phillips head? It’s the one that’s—“

 

“I do know what a Phillips head screwdriver is,” she jokes. “My father is actually a contractor, back in England.”

 

“Oh?” he asks, interested. “So what brought you to America to be a sort-of doctor?”

 

She can’t see his face but she can hear his smile as she places the proper tool in his outstretched hand and takes the wrench back.

 

“Mostly some good scholarship money,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to travel and explore. When Harvard offered the scholarship—“

 

A loud banging noise sounds from behind the machine. “Sorry. You went to _Harvard?”_

She hums. “Yes, I did. And as a correction I _am_ a doctor. I’m just finishing my second PhD now, actually.”

 

“Second?!” he practically yelps.

 

“I’m in biochemistry,” she explains. “I mostly do medical research, trying to cure cancer, but—“

 

“Oh right,” he quips. “Just trying to cure bloody cancer. No big deal.”

 

She rolls her eyes. It’s the response she usually gets. “I’m no saint. People always get so caught up in what I do and it’s not—I’m just interested in the science, to be honest. That sounds horrible. It’s just—I didn’t get into this to save the world. I got into science because I have to _know.”_

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Oh right. Forgot you can’t see my face.”

 

She hears a metallic sound, something popping out, and then he holds the screwdriver out.

 

“Wrench,” he says.

 

“Magic word?” she can’t help but tease.

 

“Abracadabra?” he says cheekily. She kicks at his exposed foot and laughs, handing him the wrench anyway.

 

“So tell me more about this need to _know,”_ he says after a bit of grunting.

 

“Are you making fun of me?” she says self-consciously.

 

“’Course not,” he responds immediately. “It’s—I’m curious.”

 

“Ever since I was young, I’ve just had this—insatiable need to know. To understand. And not just science, either, but—everything. Humans, what makes us tick. The things we love and hate. The things that can save us and kill us. So I went into the sciences because I felt like it could give me all of those answers.”

 

He wriggles out from behind the machine, disheveled and a bit sweaty. One of the buttons of his flannel has come undone at the top and she drags her eyes away from his chest to look at his face. He’s staring at her curiously, in a way that none of the other men she’s ever spoken to on the topic have.

 

“And did it?”

 

“Did it what?”

 

“Give you the answers.”

 

She bites her lip and forces herself to retain eye contact. “I’m not sure. Which is maybe worse than knowing it didn’t.”

 

“Given that you just want to know,” he says. He’s not teasing her, either, and she can see it in her eyes.

 

“You get it,” she breathes.

 

He laughs, a bit bitterly, and moves past her out of the closet they call a laundry room. “I really do, trust me.”

 

“So what’s your story?” Jemma asks, watching him as he heads out of her apartment.

 

He shrugs. “Don’t really have one. I’m the handyman.”

 

And then he’s gone, leaving Jemma with the distinct feeling that she’s missed something. She sighs, making her way into the kitchen. She spots his toolbox, still on the floor near the machines. It’s so poorly organized that it practically hurts her to look at it.

 

That’s when she gets her idea.


	2. Chapter 2

Skye finds her sitting on the couch, Fitz’s toolbox sprawled out in front of her as she meticulously organizes each kind of tool by category.

 

“Well hello, weirdo,” Skye greets, tossing her bag on the floor. Jemma hardly looks up from her task; that’s how Skye knows this is serious business. Jemma never lets messiness slide.

 

“Hi,” Jemma murmurs back, studying a particular multi-tool with interest. “Do you think this would be considered a screwdriver or a wrench?”

 

“I tend not to think too hard about these things,” Skye says flippantly, pouring herself a glass of water. “So um, not to ask the obvious but…what are you doing with Fitz’s toolbox?”

 

“How do you know it’s his?” Jemma asks defensively, and entirely unconvincingly.

 

“Because I’ve known you since we were eighteen and you have _never_ owned a toolbox,” Skye says, rolling her eyes. “What gives?”

 

“His toolbox is a mess,” Jemma says flimsily. “He left it behind and I figured I could help.”

 

“Maybe he likes his toolbox messy,” Skye says with a wink. She winces and shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s possible to make that one dirty.”

 

“Certainly not your best work,” Jemma agrees. “I’m just trying to create an intuitive organization system.”

 

“Is like your B is for Blue is for Biological thing?” Skye asks wearily. “Because Jemma, you know I find your quirks adorable but maybe don’t show him the crazy until you’ve at least gotten to second base.”

 

“I have a perfectly comprehensive system,” Jemma replies primly. “And there is nothing quirky about that. It’s simply a time-saving mechanism. Perhaps it wouldn’t take you so long to get ready in the morning if you had one of your own.”

 

“Ouch, Jemma,” Skye teases. “You wound me.”

 

Jemma rolls her eyes, focusing in on the task at hand once more. “I think Fitz will appreciate it.”

 

“So are you going to show up at his door in a trench coat and lingerie, toolbox in hand?” Skye asks. Jemma immediately looks back up, eyes wide and jaw dropped, especially when she recognizes that Skye isn’t even _joking._

“I am most certainly not,” Jemma denies. “I’m just going to return his toolbox in a much better state than he left it.”

 

“Or you could ask him about his penis while you’re at it,” Skye says quickly and casually. Jemma glares at her.

 

“Why did I move in with you again?”

 

“Because without me your life was just work and—I don’t know what you did after work, but it was definitely no fun.”

 

“I had fun!”

 

“Jemma, you once sent me a screenshot of a documentary about Guantanamo Bay. At 10 p.m. on a Friday night. And the commentary was about the species of _lizards_ on the island.”

 

“It seemed as though the filmmakers really wanted us to notice the lizards, to be fair,” Jemma says weakly. “But you _may_ have a point.”

 

“Of course I do,” Skye scoffs. “So when are you going over there?”

 

“Once I’ve finished,” Jemma says. “Hey, Skye, how much do you know about Fitz?”

 

Skye’s eyes raise up. “Other than the fact that you have a big fat crush on him? I know he’s from Ireland—“

 

“Scotland,” Jemma corrects.

 

“Well, then I know nothing,” Skye finishes, throwing her hands up. “When you’re done with your little wooing project, wanna go grab some lunch?”

 

“That sounds nice,” Jemma says, having just finishing organizing the socket wrenches by proper size. She leans back to examine her handiwork and smiles. “Perfect.”

 

“Of course It’s perfect,” Jemma jokes. “I did it.”

 

“Alright,” Skye sighs. “Go put on a bra and some presentable clothes, please.”

 

Jemma looks down at herself and immediately turns pink. As she closes the door to her room, she hears Skye call out to her.

 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing with no bra on, Simmons! I _invented_ the ‘oops I’m not wearing a bra, can you see my boobs too much through this shirt’ move!”

 

Jemma doesn’t respond, but she catches herself smirking when she sees a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She gets changed into a blouse and flats and a bit of a makeup, joining Skye for the walk up the stairs to Apartment 19. Something in Jemma’s gut flutters with nerves and she knocks on the door in a rapid succession of knocks. She nearly keeps going, but Skye grabs her hand and pulls it back.

 

Fitz swings open the door, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. His t-shirt is dotted with little specks of water—if Jemma had to guess, she’d say they interrupted him while he was doing the dishes.

 

“Hi!” Jemma says, a bit too loudly. Skye cringes beside her. “You left your toolbox.”

 

She extends it out and he grabs it gingerly, exceedingly careful not to touch her hands. Jemma studies him with a frown growing on her face.

 

“Jemma reorganized it!” Skye jumps in. Fitz’s brow furrows, his head tilting in confusion.

 

“Reorganized it? It was—it was fine.”

 

Jemma’s mouth goes dry with nerves. She’d been trying to be _helpful_ but what if she’d offended him? First she’d put her paws all over him without his permission and now she was reorganizing his personal belongings without asking?

 

“Well I think it looks great,” Skye finally says. “You’ll be able to fix a lot more washing in less time now!”

 

For some reason, this doesn’t seem to have Skye’s intended affect. Something in his eyes darkens and a flush creeps up his neck. “Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for bringing it back.”

 

Then he closes the door. “Boozy lunch?” Skye suggests.

 

“Oh yes.”

 

**[3. Two Weeks, Four Days Since Move-In]**

 

Ever since the strange interaction at his door, Jemma has been unable to stop thinking about the potential damage she caused. It shouldn’t really matter that much, and she knows it. He’s the maintenance guy in the building so of course she’ll have to see him if anything breaks but she’s not _completely_ helpless on her own, either.

 

She’s always struggled with hating the feeling of the possibility that someone might not like her, ever since she was a child. She’d felt it strongly when Skye’s now-ex boyfriend Grant had made it quite clear that he found her a bit annoying, and even when Hunter had thought she was too prim and proper.

 

But this is somehow different, and she’s even making mistakes in the lab over it. She’d put a biological sample in a _clear bag,_ for crying out loud. It was completely unacceptable, and she knows that if she doesn’t do something to fix the situation soon, it’s only a matter of time until she causes a small biological disaster in her lab.

 

Skye is out with some co-workers tonight and so she has the entire apartment for herself. It feels too empty and quiet, and nothing will take her mind off of the handyman one floor up.

 

She looks at the small hammer that Skye had bought to hang their 9 and Three Quarters sign in the living room. Worrying her lip between her teeth, she contemplates smacking a hole into the wall.

 

“This is insane,” she mumbles to herself, even as her hand reaches out toward the hammer. “I would never do that. That’s something a crazy person would do.”

 

She wrenches her hand backwards and then stares at the little plastic cage in the corner. One of her lab mice. She’d taken him home because he needed to be observed over-night. Jemma is _pretty_ sure this particular mouse will be dead by morning; the radiation treatment they’d applied had killed every other test subject.

 

She straightens her back, peering into the little plastic cage. “Poor thing,” she sighs. “But hopefully one day your death will save a lot of people.”

 

The mouse just looks at her, oblivious to what she’s saying. He’s a big sluggish and agitated.

 

“This is even crazier,” she says to the mouse. Then she puts his cage on the floor and lets him out.

 

She picks up her phone and dials the 24-hour maintenance phone. Fitz answers, voice groggy, and she realizes that it’s past midnight now. If he didn’t hate her before, he’ll certainly hate her _now._

“Hi Fitz, this is Jemma Simmons, I live in Apartment 9?”

 

“Yeah, hi Jemma,” he sighs. She hears rustling and imagines him sitting up in bed. For some reason she imagines him with flannel bed sheets, perhaps because he’s always dressed in those flannel button-downs. “What’s up?”

 

“Um, I’m afraid there’s a mouse in my apartment. Sorry to bother you, but—“

 

“Be there in a minute,” he says, and then the line goes dead.

 

That’s when she realizes the mouse’s cage is on the floor, and the mouse himself is just kind—sitting in the middle of her living room. She grabs the cage and runs it into her room, shoving it into the back of her closet (something she’s sure she’ll regret later, when her clothes begin to smell like mouse cage).

 

The knock on her door sounds just as she closes her bedroom door, for good measure, and she realizes that she’s wearing an oversized pair of men’s sweatpants that Skye had nicked from her college boyfriend, hair thrown up in a bun.

 

There’s nothing for it, really, so she opens the door.

 

He’s in a t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms (of course he is, she thinks, because she’s begun to doubt that he can put together a single ensemble without the material somehow involved). Black slippers shuffle into her apartment, a different kind of toolbox in hand.

 

“Hey,” he greets tiredly. “So where’d you see the mouse? I doubt we’ll catch him tonight, he probably won’t come back if he saw you—but he’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll set some traps and you or Skye can call me and I’ll come deal with it for you.”

 

He’s just about finished his little speech when he freezes, eyebrows raising at the white mouse, curled up on the rug.

 

“That’s the mouse?”

 

“Indeed it is,” Jemma says awkwardly. “He’s um—well, I think he’s rather sleepy. So perhaps we could just—snatch him right up? Not kill him?”

 

Fitz kneels down, staring at it. “This isn’t a wild mouse.”

 

Jemma’s pulse speeds up and she desperately tries to come up with someone to say. “How do you mean?”

 

“This is the kind of mouse you get at a pet store or something,” he observes, eyes narrowing. “Someone’s pet mighta gotten out in the building, he wandered into here. Bit odd that he’s so comfortable sleeping on your rug.”

 

“Oh well, then I suppose I’ll just hang onto him,” Jemma says quickly.

 

Fitz nods resolutely. “Nah, I’ll take him. Kind of my job, I guess. I’ll put up some signs in the common area.”

 

“Well I certainly hope someone claims him,” Jemma says. “I would hate for him to die on his own.”

 

Now Fitz _really_ looks confused. “Why would he die?”

 

“I just—well, um, you know—the high stress situation, and he’s such a wee thing—“

 

Fitz bends down and goes to pick up the mouse, and that’s when Jemma remembers that the mouse has been exposed to high levels of fairly unstable radiation. She shoves him backward forcefully, sending him toppling onto her couch.

 

“Don’t touch him!”

 

“What. The. Hell?” he pants, staring up at her in barely disguised fear.

 

“He’s from my lab,” she admits in one breath. “I felt really bad about messing about with your toolbox and you seemed upset at me, so I—“

 

“So you brought a lab mouse into your apartment?” he questions, gaping at her. “To—to lure me here in the middle of the bloody night?”

 

“Well no, I brought him here for overnight assessment. He’s the last one alive, and—“

 

“That’s why you—why you—why you didn’t want me to touch him!” Fitz exclaims, standing up and shuddering. “Is he diseased?!”

 

“No!” Jemma denies. “Well, sort of. Just a bit of radioactivity, that’s all.”

 

He says nothing for a long beat, just stares at her with his jaw hanging open. “You’re absolutely mental.”

 

She swallows down the lump in her throat and does her best not to start crying. It’s absurd, really, that she’s so concerned with this man’s opinion of her. She’s practically a double doctorate, and she’s acting like a lovestruck teenage girl.

 

“I’m sorry,” she manages to get out. It’s so quiet that she’s sure he can barely hear her. He scrubs his hands over his face.

 

“Look, I’m not—I’m not mad at you, Jemma. And you did a damn good job rearranging my tools, but it’s just—it’s just me, alright? Don’t worry about it. And you don’t need to release any radioactive mice into your apartment.”

 

She glances away from him. “I just wanted to apologize.”

 

He finally smiles at her, just slightly, and she’s glad she looks up quick enough to catch it. “How bout next time you just pop upstairs and knock?”

 

“Deal,” she agrees. “I’ll just collect this mouse now, put him back where he belongs—“

 

“Yeah, I’m gonna had back to bed,” he yawns. “See you around, Jemma.”

 

“Goodnight, Fitz.”

 

She puts on the proper gloves and puts the mouse back into his cage. When she wakes, she’s surprised to find him still alive, and she rushes to take him back to the lab.

 

She decides not to tell Skye about her mortifying encounter with Fitz and hope she never finds out about it on her own.

 

**[4. Three Weeks Since Move-In]**

 

She’s managed to avoid him since the mouse incident, only briefly encountering him in the hall as he’d come out of someone else’s apartment. The woman was gorgeous, wearing a silky flower-printed dress, and Fitz had smiled at her amiably as he left.

 

It had made her blood boil, and she had hardly even smiled at him when he’d greeted her with a grin.

 

But when she walks into the apartment after work, Skye is standing with the blasted hammer in one hand, the smoke detector above her beeping shrilly.

 

“What on Earth happened here?” Jemma gasps, removing her coat.

 

“Can you call Fitz?” Skye asks sweetly. “The smoke alarm wouldn’t stop beeping so I killed it, only then it rose again.”

 

“When it’s beeping it just needs new batteries!” Jemma exclaims, exasperated. “We don’t need to call Fitz. I’ll fix this myself.”

 

Jemma may not have a full toolbox, but she does have a decent amount of the necessities in a special drawer in the kitchen. Nobody has ever accused Jemma Simmons of being unprepared for anything.

 

Well, aside from her handyman crush recognizing that she’s let a radioactive lab mouse out in her own apartment just to lure him there. Of course, Skye doesn’t know about that.

 

“We should just call Fitz,” Skye says, rolling her eyes as Jemma pulls out a screwdriver and the stepstool from the hall closet.

 

“We can’t call Fitz,” Jemma snaps.

 

“And why not?”

 

Jemma pauses in her actions. She’s up on the stepstool now, staring up at the smoke detector.

 

Skye senses her hesitation and crosses her arms. “Jemma,” she says slowly. “Why can’t we call Fitz?”

 

“We’ve bothered him too much already.”

"It's his job!"

 

“That doesn’t mean we can just harangue him whenever we want!” Jemma protests. She’s so focused on trying to make the horrendously shrill beeping noise _stop_ that she doesn’t even notice Skye go to the door. It’s not until she hears his voice that she startles away from her project.

 

“Heard the alarm going off,” he explains to Skye. “Thought I’d come deal with it before you had to call.”

 

“I’ve got it!” Jemma calls out. She’s on her tip toes, even the added height of the stepstool still not making her quite tall enough. “There’s no need, Fitz.”

 

He watches her sway precariously. “Well, you’re turning that screw the wrong way,” he says wryly. “So maybe there is.”

 

She scoffs, eyes still focused on the smoke detector. “Oh please, I know how to screw.”

 

Skye laughs incredulously. Fitz makes a small choked sound and then she hears what she’s just said.

 

“Oh. I mean, I know how to—oh, hell.”

 

“Be careful,” Fitz stammers out. “The electrical might be—“

 

She stabs blindly at part of the wall ceiling that’s been exposed by Skye’s incessant hammering and feels a sharp tingling feeling race up her arm. She squeaks and topples…directly onto Fitz.

 

“Ow,” she moans, leaning heavily onto him. His arms come up around her on instinct.

 

“Are you alright?” he asks. She glances up and meets his eyes; they’re flooded with genuine concern and she hopes he won’t startle away once he realizes just how close together they are. Skye seems to be frozen in her place, holding her breath for fear of the same thing.

 

“Mhm,” she hums. “Fine. Thanks for—for that.”

 

His hand goes to examine her arm, and she notices that it trembles rather forcefully—and not in the way that she’d _like_ to have Fitz’s hand trembling when he touches her.

 

But after the incident with his forehead, she chooses to say nothing.

 

**[5. Four Weeks Since Move-In]**

 

She’d seen a woman leaving his apartment. A woman who decidedly did _not_ live in their building. Jemma is positive she’d have remembered seeing that blonde Amazonian _goddess_ wandering the halls.

 

It’s even worse than the time with Little Miss Flowers. Her hands clench into fists at her side as she watches the woman walk in front of her, hips swaying with a kind of ease and confidence that Jemma herself could only dream of having.

 

She doesn’t even realize that she’s still standing in front of Fitz’s door until he comes out.

 

“Oh!” he starts. “Jemma, hi.”

 

“Hi,” Jemma greets, still clutching her mail tightly. “Just…getting my mail.”

 

“Ah,” he nods. “I’ve been talking to Victoria about putting mailboxes on every floor, but she said I can’t just change the postal system, so…”

 

“Who’s she?” Jemma blurts out.

 

“Victoria? Victoria Hand. Your landlord, Jemma.”

 

“No, no her,” Jemma huffs. “Her.”

 

She gestures vaguely down the hall and Fitz frowns. “Uh, are you feeling alright? Nobody’s—nobody’s there.”

 

“The blonde,” she clarifies. “The beautiful tall blonde lady. Your girlfriend?”

 

Fitz splutters, hand flying to the back of his neck. “Bobbi? God, no. No, no. Bobbi is like—she’s like a uh, a sister to me.”

 

“Oh. Well, she’s quite pretty.”

 

“Yeah, and a pain in my ass,” Fitz grins. “We met after—uh, well yeah I’ve known her for a long time.”

 

“You met her after what?” Jemma asks.

 

“Not important,” Fitz evades. “I’ve actually got to get going so…”

 

He moves past her, makes it a few steps past her, and then turns around. He takes a deep breath.

 

“I’m actually heading over to this great tea shop a few blocks over. I know you just moved and I noticed a lot of tea on your counter, so if you’d—if you wanna come with me, that’d be—that’d be fine.”

 

Jemma barely manages to stifle her smile. She waves her mail around and twirls her keys around her finger.

 

“That’d be lovely, Fitz. I’ll just run my mail down. Meet you outside?”

 

He nods and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket. She practically flies down the stairs, chucking the mail at Skye.

 

“What the hell?” her roommate laughs.

 

“I’m going for tea with Fitz!” Jemma exclaims breathlessly. “I’ll be back later.”

 

She misses the way that Skye’s eyes light up. Her smile widens and she pumps her fist in the air in victory.

 

“Have fun! Make good choices!”

 

The walk to the tea shop is pleasant. She learns that he’s from Glasgow, and that he moved to the States for college, just like her. He has no siblings and a single mother, and he likes dogs more than cats but if he could, he’d prefer to have a pet monkey. She tells him about growing up in Sheffield, and bonds with him over the experience of growing up an only child. She prefers cats, she tells him, but she also adores small dogs. She notices that he often stutters, and sometimes takes a moment to find the word he’s looking for. Her every instinct screams to find the words for him, but she reels herself in to avoid overstepping.

 

By the time they order their tea (and Fitz had paid for both, despite her objections), they’d found themselves a nice spot in front of a window.

 

“I like sitting right here,” Fitz explains. He points to the street corner just outside. “This is my favorite corner in the whole city.”

 

“I can’t say that I’ve ever had a favorite corner in _any_ city,” Jemma muses. “So why is this one yours?”

 

“It’s right near a school but also near the big office buildings. You can see all these different uh…different kinds of people, all interacting. Waiting for the light to change. It’s—I don’t know, it’s stupid.”

 

“It’s not,” Jemma interrupts. “I love people-watching. It’s like I was saying weeks ago, about wanting to know how people tick and—“

 

“And needing to _know_ things,” he finishes. He takes a deep gulp of his tea and seems to think long and hard for a moment. She just watches, willing herself into silence.

 

He pulls out a paperback book from the inside of his jacket and slides it toward her on the table. “This is what I usually do, when I’m…when I come here.”

 

Jemma toys with the cover, taking it in. “The Outsiders. I Loved this book when I was young.”

 

Fitz gulps and nods. “Yeah, uh, me too. I’ve been—I’ve kind of had to start over.”

 

This really catches her attention. “Start over with what?”

 

He taps at his temple with a trembling hand. “Accident. It kind of—well, it knocked my head loose, is what my mum says. I was in a—in a car accident. My car was pushed into the water when I got hit from behind and—and—“

 

“Hypoxia,” Jemma finishes. He nods.

 

“Permanent brain damage.”

 

“How bad?” she asks quietly. She reaches a hand out toward him and touches her fingers to his arm.

 

“Bad enough that I had to relearn how to read,” he laughs humorlessly.

 

She studies him carefully. “I didn’t know you before. But who you are now, you seem…well, I think you’re really great.”

 

“Yeah?” he asks, a bit shyly. She smiles back gently.

 

“Yeah. Not many people would still speak to a woman who released a radioactive mouse into her own apartment just to apologize.”

 

He barks out a laugh and the somber mood dissipates. “So tell me, Jemma—d’you have any other crazy lab mouse stories?”

 

She grins and leans back in her seat. “Okay, well there was this one time…”


	3. Chapter 3

**[5. Three Weeks, Six Days Since Move-In]**

 

“They went on a date,” Skye explains to Hunter, popping a fry into her mouth.

 

“We did not,” Jemma defends, shooting her roommate an annoyed look. Hunter is an insufferable gossip and she knows it’s just a matter of time before he’s sending her horrible pickup lines related to _handsy_ -men and the many uses of their tools. “We went for tea.”

 

Hunter watches with interest, spinning his pint of beer idly in front of him. “And who paid for said tea, Simmy?”

 

“I really wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she huffs. “And if you must know, he did.”

 

“It was a date,” Hunter and Skye say in unison.

 

“If it _was_ a date, don’t you think he’d have made some effort to reach out to me again?” Jemma asks, a bit self-consciously.

 

Admittedly, she’d thought it was a date, too. They’d spent nearly three hours at the tea shop, and he _had_ awkwardly faltered when they’d made it back to their building, leaning forward toward her and then abruptly back again. She’d chalked it up to nerves and shyness (and besides, there are other factors to consider—they live in the same building and they’ve only known each other for a few weeks).

 

Only then she hadn’t heard from him. She knows he has her number, and she swears she’d seen him dart into his apartment when she’d gone to pick up her and Skye’s mail yesterday.

 

So obviously, it had _not_ been a date. She’d misinterpreted the situation and he’s obviously afraid of the very assumption that had made her so excited.

 

“Maybe it was a date,” Hunter grins. “Just a bad one.”

 

He takes a sip of his beer and narrowly dodges the peanut Jemma tosses at his forehead.

 

“We had a lovely time,” Jemma corrects him decisively. “But now he’s _afraid_ of me.”

 

Skye narrows her eyes in thought, lips pouting as she looks at her best friend. “Hey Jemma, you look good tonight. Like _really_ good tonight.”

 

Jemma runs a hand over her messy waves and smiles bashfully. “Thank you, Skye. I tried something new with my eyes.”

 

“I’m bored,” Hunter announces. “This conversation has lost me.”

 

“And shockingly we do not care,” Skye deadpans. “Alright, here’s the plan, team. We are about to get _hammered.”_

“You have regained my interest,” Hunter says. Skye winks at him and turns back to Jemma.

 

“Oh, I don’t know Skye…”

 

“When was the last time you got really, irresponsibly drunk?”

 

“Probably at our graduation party,” Jemma admits.

 

Skye’s jaw drops. “Jemma, that was _years ago.”_

“I’ve been busy being an adult,” Jemma says primly.

 

“Fair enough,” Hunter shrugs. “Only tonight you’re not going to be doing any of that.”

 

“So maybe it wasn’t a date with Fitz,” Skye says. Jemma ignores the way that her stomach plummets at the thought. “Or it was and he just wasn’t feeling it but he’s _one_ dude and you barely know him. So let’s get drunk, meet some new people, and have a good time.”

 

“I make a great wingman,” Hunter offers. “You’ve met Mack, right? One time I introduced him to a woman and they were leaving together ten minutes later.”

 

“Perhaps they were trying to evade your company,” Jemma sasses. He gives her a sarcastic little smile and she returns it.

 

Skye waves down their waitress, a bright-eyed college girl named Callie, and orders a round of shots. They down them and Jemma does her best to get Fitz out of her mind. She’d had a crush on him when she first met him—she’d felt an instant kind of chemistry with him that she’d very rarely encountered. But then he’d been so helpful, and he’d understood what she meant when she told him about her passion for knowledge. After they’d had tea together, she’d started to truly _like_ him.

 

For the first time in forever, she’s actually _interested_ in someone. She’s not sure she’s ever actually been legitimately interested in anyone this way. But that doesn’t mean that he finds her as fascinating as she finds him.

 

So she takes another shot and chats with some overly muscular bloke with a one-syllable name that she can’t quite recall.

 

“Oh, Chad,” she laughs. “You’re too much!”

 

Hunter chokes on what she suspects is a laugh and the man crinkles his face, puzzled. “My name is Tim.”

 

“Okay, Kevin,” Jemma smiles, nodding brightly. Hunter intervenes, grabbing onto her elbow.

 

“Y’know, I think my mate here has had a bit too much to drink,” Hunter says. “You get it, Kevin.”

 

“It’s _Chad.”_

“Right well, have a good night, Kevin.”

 

Hunter tugs her away toward the skee-ball machines at the back of the bar and stares her down intently.

 

“Where’s your head at? It’s like you don’t even _want_ to have irresponsible sex with a stranger,” Hunter says, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

 

She pokes at his chest. “Well _you_ haven’t met any charming ladies tonight either. Nor have you even tried!”

 

Truthfully, the only one who seems to be having any success is Skye, who’s sitting in a booth with a bright-smiled man who Jemma is pretty sure she’s seen on TV as a sports commentator.

 

“Alright, Simmy, I’ll tell you what’s up,” Hunter sighs. He bends down and puts a quarter in the skee-ball machine, picking up one of the heavy wooden balls that rolls out. He rolls it in his hand and grimaces. “I think I’ve met my match.”

 

She doesn’t even snap about the nickname. She’s too intrigued by what kind of woman could possibly tame Lance Hunter into submission.

 

“Oh? Do tell.”

 

“She’s not my usual type,” Hunter says, rolling the ball off of the ramp. It lands in the lowest-scoring hole and he groans. “She’s tall and blonde and _sharp.”_

“So she’s smart?”

 

“Oh yeah, she’s smart,” Hunter grins. It’s almost…wistful, and Jemma can’t quite believe that she’s seeing this expression on his face. “But I meant _sharp._ She’s terrifying.”

 

“And you like her why?”

 

He grins brightly. “Because she’s _terrifying.”_

Jemma has never claimed to understand Hunter. She’s sure even some of the world’s most well-trained psychologists wouldn’t even make that claim, but to see him utterly smitten over this mystery cactus woman and then glance over to see Skye toss her hair and giggle at something the man—Antoint Triplett, Jemma remembers—says…it settles uncomfortably in her chest.

 

Skye had been right when she’d first agreed to move in with her. Jemma had sacrificed her romantic life for her career, and she can count her friends on one hand these days.

 

Feeling rather despondent, she makes her way toward the bar and orders herself one more drink, making sure to put it on Hunter’s tab. She sips at it and returns to skee-ball with Hunter, letting him ramble and rant about the object of his affections.

 

“I swear to you, she’s like a blonde Wonder Woman. Truly an Amazonian goddess. She doesn’t put up with my crap either. You ever met someone who you just _click_ with?”

 

Jemma sighs, sipping the rest of her drink rapidly as her thoughts wander to a set of blue eyes and a trembling hand. “Yes, I have. It’s really something, isn’t it?”

 

He nods and turns his attention back to the game. Jemma squeezes his shoulder. “It was good to see you, Hunter, but I think I’m going to head home.”

 

“But we were supposed to get irresponsibly drunk!” he whines, stomping his foot like a petulant child.

 

“I _am_ drunk,” she insists. “But I also really want to make some kind of snack and crawl into my bed with some Netflix.”

 

“You know what, Simmy, that’s fair enough,” Hunter nods resolutely. “Get home safe, alright? Shoot me a text.”

 

She smiles at him softly. He may be a sarcastic, hard-drinking, womanizing, altogether pain in the ass, but he always looks out for her and Skye. “Thanks, Hunter. I will. And hey, why don’t you just—ask this amazing goddess out to dinner? Someplace nice.”

 

He licks his lips and nods. “I might. I just might.”

 

“You’re not half bad,” Jemma teases. “She might even agree to go.”

 

He rolls his eyes. “Alright, Sass Master. Get.”

 

She laughs and gathers her jacket and handbag, which happens to be in the booth beside Skye. “I’m going to head home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

“Noooo,” Skye moans. “Jemma, stay! We’re having fun.”

 

Jemma chooses not to point out that Skye’s been chatting up the incredibly handsome man in front of her for _hours._ Instead she just smiles wanly.

 

“I’m really quite knackered.”

 

Skye leans toward her, throwing one arm around Jemma’s shoulders and tugging her down as she dips her hand into Jemma’s purse as subtly as she can. Jemma’s penchant for organization and systems makes her extremely predictable, and Skye’s fingers curled around her keys easily. They’re exactly where she expected them to be; tucked into the small zippered side-pocket. She retreats with her hand closed around them and sighs dramatically.

 

“Fine. I guess I’ll let you go, but we’re doing this again _very_ soon and you won’t be leaving until they physically make us leave.”

 

Jemma rolls her eyes and smiles at her roommate. “Fine, I accept that agreement. It was nice to meet you,” she says to Trip. He waves at her and echoes her sentiment. She heads outside and starts the walk to their apartment, which is luckily not very far away. She hadn’t been lying to Hunter; she _is_ quite drunk and it’s been a long time since she’d imbibed this much.

 

Her legs feel tingly and her skin feels warm and it would all be quite pleasant, if she could just _stop thinking about Leo Fitz._

She reaches her building and searches for her keys in her bag, but finds the little pocket empty. Frowning, she digs through the rest of her purse.

 

“Oh, no no no,” Jemma mumbles, crouching down on the steps and emptying the entire contents of her purse. Her keys are nowhere to be found. Jemma falls onto the steps, defeated. She shoves it all back in and dials Skye’s number—only to be sent straight to voicemail. Seconds later, she receives a text.

 

_[Skye]: Sorry I’m closing the deal with Trip now, we just got to his place._

 

_[Jemma]: Any chance his place is near ours?_

_[Skye]: No, he’s across town. We took a cab. What’s up?_

_[Jemma]: I left my keys inside…I guess I could see if Hunter would let me crash on his couch?_

_[Skye]: Take it from me, DO NOT sleep on Hunter’s couch. Just call Fitz, he’ll let you in with the master._

She rolls her head backward, staring at the little light that illuminates the stoop of the building. It’s rather cold outside and Skye probably has a point about Hunter’s couch. Besides, all she wants is to be curled up in her own bed.

 

She stares at his name in her contacts for several long moments before she takes the plunge and dials. He doesn’t answer until the fifth ring, and his accent is thick with sleep.

 

“Jemma?” he mumbles. “You okay?”

 

She tries not to get too excited about the fact that he’s saved her number into the emergency maintenance phone—and that he’s apparently concerned for her.

 

“I got locked out, and Skye is spending the night elsewhere. Can you please come let me in?”

 

He sighs heavily. “Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute.”

 

“Thank you so much!”

 

The line is dead before she finishes and she blinks at the phone, remembering the evening when she’d released the mouse. Perhaps he just _really_ didn’t like to be woken up.

 

He appears at the door in the same slippers he wore that night, but in a different pair of flannel pajama pants. His curls are mussed with sleep, eyes bleary. He looks _warm_ and in her buzzed state she considers wrapping her arms around him to put her face against his chest.

 

 _But that would be crazy,_ she thinks to herself, even though that’s what she’s been lately.

 

She’s so busy staring at him that she doesn’t notice that _he_ is gaping at _her._

“You look—you look—different.”

 

“Thanks,” she says wryly, moving past him into the building.

 

“Not bad different,” he says to her back. “Just…just different.”

 

She looks over her shoulder and gives him a small smile. “It’s the eyeshadow.”

 

“And the—and the hair,” he says, gesturing at his own head.

 

“Sorry for waking you,” she says softly.

 

“Were you—out?” he asks. She tilts her head to the side and leans in.

 

“Can I tell you a little secret?”

 

He hums quietly and she steps closer into his space.

 

“I’m _quite_ drunk.”

 

He laughs, warm and deep, and tries to use the master key to get into her apartment. The key jams, though, and he wiggles it desperately.

 

“Shite,” he curses. “I’ll have to get my stuff, this could be a while. I’m sorry, Jemma.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” she says quickly. “It’s not your fault I left my keys at home. It’s alright, it’s the middle of the night—I can just, um—“

 

“What, sleep in the hallway?” he asks, clearly unamused by the suggestion.

 

“I’ll figure something out,” she says, attempting a smile. Truthfully, she feels as though she might break down into tears. The heels on her feet are uncomfortable, the top she wears is itchy, and the fact that she’s in a leather pencil skirt just feels ridiculous. All she wants is a pair of joggers and a well-worn t-shirt.

 

Fitz rubs at his eyes. “I’m—I’m kind of half-asleep, and I think if I tried to fix this right now I’d probably make it worse so why don’t you come crash at--at my place and we’ll deal with this in the morning?”

 

“Yes!” Jemma agrees. She realizes how eager she must sound, and quickly tries to dial it back. “I mean, sure. Yes, that would be—well, it would be preferable to sleeping out here.”

 

He smiles at her, a bit unsurely, and leads the way to his place. She’s never actually been inside of it, and she’s quite excited to see how he lives.

 

“Sorry it’s such a mess in here,” he apologizes. “I didn’t really expect to have company.”

 

Jemma crinkles her nose. “Again, so sorry about this.”

 

“We’ve apologized to each other a lot,” Fitz points out with a little laugh. He holds the door open to his apartment and leads her in first, locking the door behind him as he flicks on a few lights.

 

It’s rather bare, with little décor. The living room is a couch and a small coffee table, a TV mounted to the wall in front of it. The coffee table is littered with drawings that look like the schematics she’d seen in the engineering elective she’d taken in college.

 

“What are these?” she asks curiously, lifting one up. Fitz quickly snatches it from her hand.

 

“That’s nothing. Just—just nothing.”

 

“These are schematics,” she persists. She’s drunk enough to be unashamed of her need to know the answers to everything. “Why do you have these?”

 

“Because I—since I—I drew them,” he stammers out. Her jaw drops and she’s sure her eyes are comically wide.

 

“Wow,” she breathes. “Perhaps your head isn’t all that loose after all, hm?”

 

She opens her mouth to apologize for joke that, in retrospect, was in very bad taste, but he’s grinning at her so she decides to stay quiet and let him do the talking.

 

“I was an engineer. Before.”

 

“I’m surprised you didn’t mention that at tea.”

 

“Yeah well, I’m not—I’m not anymore. I’m just a—a handyman.”

 

She huffs, putting the schematics down and placing her hands on her hips. The alcohol in her veins makes her particularly testy at the suggestion that he’s anything less than magnificent. “ _Just_ a handyman? Your job is quite complicated, and you’re very good at what you do. There’s nothing _wrong_ with working in maintenance. Without you this whole place would crumble to the ground, especially if Skye had any say in it.”

 

“It’s not—it’s not that!” he exclaims. “I just—I didn’t want you to—to expect me to be as smart as I used to be. You’re—you’re brilliant. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

 

She clucks her tongue with a shake of her head. “I _already_ think you’re brilliant, you know.”

 

He blushes and rubs his hand on the back of his neck. “Well uh—thank you. I’m just trying to get back into practice. So maybe someday I can—I can go back.”

 

“I think it’s a great idea. And if you ever want any help, please let me know. Because I would love to help you out with your equipment.”

 

He makes a little spluttering sound that she doesn’t really understand. Shrugging, she diverts the subject.

 

“Do you have anything I could wear to sleep?”

 

“Oh, right, of course,” he stutters. “Let me just grab you something. And you can—you can take the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

 

“Oh, no!” Jemma denies. “I’ll sleep on the couch, it’s not a problem at all.”

 

“My mum would—she’d kill me if she found out I let a woman sleep on my couch,” Fitz calls to her from the bedroom. She follows the sound and is pleasantly surprised by the neatness of his space. He hands her a t-shirt and a pair of (no surprises) plaid flannel pants. He snatches a pillow off of the bed and moves toward the hallway again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

“Fitz?” she asks as he leaves. He turns around expectantly and she remembers that she’d woken him up to begin with. Asking him to stay up and talk with her is _way_ beyond unreasonable, so she just shakes her head. “Nevermind.”

 

“Let me grab you some water,” he offers. “Might help with the morning headache.”

 

Jemma shakes her head in embarrassment at her drunken state. “Sorry I’m such a mess.”

 

“You’re not,” he replies immediately. “You’re not a mess.”

 

She feels the need to correct him. After all, she and her roommate have both intentionally broken things just to get him into their apartment and she’d somehow locked herself out, drunk, but if he doesn’t seem to recall those things, why remind him?

 

Instead she slips out of her clothes and into his, feeling a bit pathetic as she inhales the scent of him on the soft cotton of the t-shirt. He returns with a glass of water and freezes in the doorway, staring at her with lips slightly parted.

 

 _I’m going to put my mouth on his mouth,_ she thinks to herself. _Just put my mouth right on there. It’ll be fine. He’ll love it._

His eyes are skimming her over, some mix of happiness and darkness in them, and she moves forward with the intention of making good on her drunken plan of action. He shoves the glass of water forward so forcefully that it sloshes onto her toes. He mumbles an apology and a goodnight, and then he’s gone to the living room.

 

She’s missed her moment. She climbs into the soft sheets of his bed—a cotton t-shirt- like material, not flannel as she’d originally anticipated—and falls sleep quite easily. When she wakes up, she finds a note beside her on his bedside table.

 

_Jemma,_

_Had to go help Mike with something. I fixed your lock and ran into Skye. You’re good to go._

  * _Fitz_



 

She’d rather hoped that they might have breakfast together. Perhaps she could charm him with her fantastic scrambled eggs and they could sip tea, both of them wearing his pajamas in the morning light.

 

Glancing toward the window, she winces. Her mouth still tastes like tequila and the brightness of said morning light sends a shooting pain behind her eyes.

 

Perhaps it’s for the best he’s gone. She changes into her clothes from last night, folding his pajamas neatly and placing them on the bed. Just below his note, she scrawls her own with a pen she finds on his desk.

 

_Fitz,_

_Thanks again for letting me sleep here. I owe you one!_

  * _Jemma_



When she gets back to her apartment, Skye is sitting in the living room with an excited smile.

 

“Oh hey, walk-of-shame,” Skye grins. “Where did you end up last night?”

 

“I slept at Fitz’s,” Jemma says a bit hoarsely. She pours a large glass of water and chugs it. “Since I locked myself out, remember?”

 

“And did anything—untoward happen?”

 

Jemma scoffs. “Of course not. He slept on the couch like a perfect gentleman.”

 

“Well Trip most _certainly_ did not,” Skye winks. “How are you feeling?”

 

“A bit ill, if I’m honest.”

 

Skye nods and then grimaces, fingers coming up to her temples. “Yeah, me too. Lazy day?”

 

“ _Please.”_

Jemma doesn’t find her keys until the afternoon. She always hangs them near the door, but for some reason they’re in Skye’s room. She’s too exhausted and hungover to think too hard about it.

 

**[6. Four Weeks, Two Days Since Move-In]**

When Jemma parks her car and starts the walk to her building, she is fully unprepared for what she sees right in front of her place.

 

Fitz, in a tank top, a car’s hood open in front of him. Even more alarmingly, Hunter leans against the familiar sedan.

 

“Simmy!” Hunter calls out.

 

“Stop that,” she snaps. Then she turns to smile at Fitz as winningly as she can. “Hello, Fitz.”

 

“Hey,” he grunts, nodding slightly as he disconnects something in the engine and yanks it out. He examines is carefully, face gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat. A sharp pang of want shoots through her gut and she can’t even look Hunter in the face. She knows exactly what she’ll see there.

 

“Turns out my Amazonian goddess is a friend of Fitz’s here,” Hunter explains with a smirk. “I told her I was having car trouble and she sent me to your building, of all places.”

 

Fitz rolls his eyes. “Bobbi’s not a goddess.”

 

“You’re right,” Hunter agrees, smile widening. “She’s a bloody hell beast, is what she is.”

 

Fitz glares at him for a moment and then softens. “Fair point.”

 

“Well I’ll let you…keep at it,” Jemma manages to get out, eyes glued to Fitz’s forearms as he reaches back into the car’s engine. She swallows hard and dashes up to the apartment, hardly hearing Hunter’s voice calling out a goodbye to her.

 

She slams the door to her apartment and leans against it, out of breath. She moans, knocking the back of her head against it in frustration.

 

“Get it together, Simmons,” she says to herself. Skye pops up out of nowhere.

 

“What’s up, Jemma?”

 

“He’s going to be the death of me,” Jemma tells her, walking into the living room and throwing her jacket and purse onto the couch beside her as she sinks down into it.

 

“Who?” Skye asks, and Jemma shoots her a look.

 

“You know exactly who. He’s out there fixing a car in nothing but a vest top. It’s—it’s practically _pornographic,_ Skye.”

 

Skye snorts. “Didn’t know you had a thing for mechanics.”

 

“Neither did I,” Jemma admits. She slaps her hands over her face. “Christ on a cracker.”

 

**[7. Four Weeks, Five Days Since Move-In]**

Jemma truly regrets her and Skye’s laziness. The grocery store is really quite a walkable distance from their apartment, but they’d opted for taking Jemma’s car instead. When they’d come out, her car only made it to the next light before dying.

 

Not wanting to waste the money on a tow for less than a mile, Jemma had the brilliant idea to push it, letting Skye steer.

 

Jemma has never hated her own mind so much.

 

Her arms hurt and her hair is sticking to the sweat on the back of her neck. It feels _awful,_ and one mile has never felt so long in her entire life.

 

Skye calls to her out of the open window. “Not too much farther, Jemma! You’re doing great!”

 

“Can we switch?” Jemma whines.

 

“Hey, pushing was your idea!” Skye calls back. “Besides, I can see the building!”

 

Jemma looks up from the back of the car, heart soaring as she sees the bricks of their building. “Oh, thank God.”

 

Mustering up the last remnants of her strength, she manages to push into a spot on the street. Skye hops out and claps her on the shoulder.

 

“Impressive stuff. You’re one tough nerd,” Skye laughs. “I’ll carry the groceries in.”

 

“Oh, how kind of you,” Jemma says wryly, still panting. She doubles over, hands on her hips.

 

“Did you just push that car here?” a familiar voice calls out. She tenses and looks up with only her eyes, spotting Fitz immediately trimming the bushes that line both sides of the stairway into the building.

 

“She did,” Skye brags. “A whole mile, actually.”

 

“Do you want me to take a look at it?” Fitz asks, tossing the shears in his hand onto the grass.

 

Jemma nods gratefully. “I really don’t have time to take it to a shop if I can avoid it,” Jemma tells him as he crosses the small street toward them.

 

“Pop the hood for me,” he says, and she reaches into the car to pull the lever. His hands search for the latch above the grill, and he pops it open with ease. “So what happened?”

 

Skye starts gathering groceries out of the trunk and makes her way inside. “Can’t let this go bad!”

 

Then she’s gone, leaving Jemma alone with Fitz and her broken car. “Well it was running just fine when we went to the grocery store,” Jemma explains. “But when we got back in, I pulled out of the driveway and it just—stopped.”

 

“Did any of the dash lights stay on? It sounds like it’s just a battery problem. I’ve got a charger in my closet, we can hook it up in the alley behind the building.”

 

“I just got a new battery,” Jemma frowns. “Only three months ago!”

 

“Huh,” he says. “Let me check a few things.”

 

 _Yeah, no problem, but I’ll need you to take your shirt off first,_ she thinks to herself. She bites down on the inside of her cheek to insure that she doesn’t actually say this out loud.

 

He checks the oil and coolant levels. Then he moves on to the radiator, explaining each process to her in only slightly-stilted sentences. Fitz speaks technically, going through the different parts in a way that isn’t condescending. He’s just thinking through the problem out loud, and she feels herself puff up with a bit of pride that not only does she understand what he’s saying, but he also seems _confident_ discussing something so mechanical.

 

“Found your problem,” Fitz announces proudly. She’d been so focused on the cadence of his voice and the movement of his fingers that she nearly misses it.

 

_Other than the fact that I desperately want you to take me to Pound Town?_

 

“Oh?” she settles on instead.

 

Fitz flicks at the wires that connect her car battery to the rest of the machine. “Your ports came loose. It’s kind of strange, I’m pretty sure this can’t just happen on its own. Unless your battery was really old. Same thing happened to Hunter’s car the other day but that was cause he hadn’t gotten a new battery in years.”

 

She furrows her brow in thought. “How strange. Can you fix it?”

 

“Definitely,” he assures her. “I just have to grab my stuff and it’ll be good as new in about ten minutes.” He jerks his thumb toward the building. “I’ll be right back.”

 

“Alright,” she tells him, a bit more breathily than she’s proud of. She’s a grown woman with two PhDs (well, almost) and she’s been reduced to putty just because an attractive man with dexterous hands and pretty eyes is fixing her car.

 

It only gets worse when he returns with a wrench in his back pocket. He’s shed the button-down over his undershirt, given the rising springtime heat, and she looks to the heavens for help. He starts working, wrenching at the little bolts in the car, and she watches the muscles in his arms twitch with the movement.

 

Just as she’s about to lose all control, he backs away and drops the hood back down. “Can you turn it on?”

 

She slips into the front seat and turns the key in the ignition. The car hums to life and she smiles, sticking her head out of the open window. “I’m all turned on!”

 

Her entire face contorts as soon as the words leave her mouth.

 

“You really need to—think a bit harder before you speak,” he teases, but his neck is flushed and she wonders if she just might affect him in the same way he affects her.

 

She shakes her head, cheeks pink. “One of these days it’s going to be the death of me.”

 

He grins at her. “There are worse ways to go.”

 

She smiles back. Her eyes drift toward the building and she sees Skye, face pressed to their living room window, chatting animatedly on the phone to someone. Skye’s eyes are locked on Jemma and Fitz and she gives Jemma an enthusiastic thumbs up.

 

_What the hell did she do this time?_

That’s when it dawns on her. Hunter had _just_ had Fitz fix the battery ports in his own car, and Jemma had admitted to Skye that Fix-It-Fitz had her all hot and bothered. But Skye couldn’t be crazy enough to have Hunter sabotage her car while they were grocery shopping…could she?

 

It doesn’t take Jemma long to realize that yes, her roommate truly is _that_ crazy.


	4. Chapter 4

**[8. Five Weeks, Three Days Since Move-In]**

“Is Skye home?” he asks anxiously.

 

She furrows her brow. “No, she won’t be back for a while.”

 

“I thought—I thought you might be able to help with this,” Fitz says, scratching nervously behind one ear. It’s the most endearing thing she’s ever seen, and she almost misses the rolled up schematics tucked under his arm. “If you’re busy that’s—that’s fine.”

 

“No!” she says, ushering him into the apartment. “I’d love to take a look. What are you designing?”

 

“A set of drones,” he explains. “Each one—has it’s own specialized function. For forensic analysis.”

 

“Forensics?” she repeats, eyebrows raising in interest. “What kind of engineering did you do?”

 

He smiles crookedly. “I worked with the police department.”

 

“Wow,” she whistles. “Impressive stuff, Fitz. Show me what you’ve got.”

 

He unfurls the paper on the coffee table and she kneels down on the floor to get a better look. “This one is Sneezy. He’s got—a complex olfactory—“

 

“Sensor,” Jemma cuts in. He had the word but she finishes the sentence anyway and he shakes his head at her fondly. “Basically like a bloodhound, yes?”

 

“Exactly,” he agrees.

 

She doubles back to his previous statement, a slow smile spreading over her lips. “Did you just call it Sneezy? And he?”

 

“Well I’ve—there’s seven, see, so I named them after the dwarfs.”

 

Jemma giggles and a wave of pure affection crashes over her when she meets his sheepish gaze. “That’s adorable.”

 

“Adorable?”

 

Rather than backing away from the statement, like she has been, she inhales sharply through her nose. “Absolutely adorable. You’re quite cute, Fitz.”

 

He clears his throat, cheeks pink as points to the second sheet. “This one is Doc.”

 

She looks at the drawings and little scrawled equations on the sides, running numbers through her head and considering possible issues with the biological components. “This is _highly_ sophisticated,” she praises. “I’m truly a difficult person to impress. Surely you at least have your masters. Four years of undergraduate work could never amount to all of this.”

 

He shakes his head. “PhD from MIT, actually.”

 

Her jaw drops and recognition clicks in her mind. “Oh my god. Fitz. You’re _Leopold Fitz.”_

His brow furrows in confusion. “What—how did you not know my first name?”

 

“You never told me!”

“You know who I am?”

 

“I can’t believe you’re _Leopold Fitz!_ I tried getting in touch with you regarding your designs for non-lethal weaponry. My first PhD research was on dendrotoxins and I thought that it might be helpful to you.”

 

“No way,” he contests. “I wouldn’t have ignored that.”

 

“It was about a year and a half ago, I think,” Jemma tells him. Fitz screws up his face in thought.

 

“Oh,” he says dully. “That was right around the time of the accident, actually.”

 

“Oh,” Jemma echoes. “Well maybe we’ll still have a chance to collaborate.”

 

Her optimism regarding his recovery and the way she truly seems impressed by his designs manages a grin out of him.

 

“Yeah I still have all of the schematics for the Night Night Gun.”

 

Jemma snorts. “The Night Night Gun? Really?”

 

“It’s a great name!” he yelps. “Perfectly descriptive with just a hint of humor.”

 

“It’s ridiculous,” she grins. “You’re ridiculous.”

 

“I thought I was adorable,” he shoots back. She can see that he wants to take it back as soon as he’s said it, so she jumps to respond before he can. “The _drones_ are adorable. _You_ are quite cute.”

 

“Ah, my mistake,” he smiles, rubbing at the back of his neck once again. “So uh, what do you think of the olfactory sensor? You’ve got a better read on this sort of thing than me.”

 

“It looks good,” she says. “Although you may need to add a few more sensors for it to be as comprehensive as you’ll want it to be.”

 

“Any more sensors will make it too front-heavy,” he replies. “He’ll just nose-dive when he tries to take off.”

 

“What if you used a lighter alloy for the casing?” Jemma suggests.

 

“They’ll be too flimsy,” he argues. “The drones have got to be able to take a beating.”

 

“Not all light-weight metals are weak,” she reminds him. He bites his lip, narrowing his eyes in consideration. Jemma’s thoughts regarding light-weight but strong alloys and drones fly out of the window as she becomes caught up in daydreams of shoving him onto her floor and having her wicked way with him.

 

But Jemma has always been polite, and she knows that it’s not exactly polite to ravage your poor handyman just because you’ve got a raging lady boner for him.

 

“You may have a point there,” he says after a long moment of though. He grabs a pencil from behind his ear (good lord, why is that so _attractive?_ she thinks to herself) and he jots down a few alterations on the design. She leans over his arm to see them and nods, her hair brushing against the stubble on his cheek. He shivers and she holds her ground.

 

“That looks great,” she says. “But—may I?”

 

She extracts the pencil from his fingers when he nods with a heavy gulp. Jemma pencils in another quick suggestion.

 

“Wow, yes,” he breathes. “That’s it. That’s exactly what it needed.”

 

He turns to look at her, and their proximity means she can feel his breath on her face. Ordinarily this would probably gross her out—after all, who really likes being _breathed on—_ but she’s too captivated by the way his eyes have three different shades of blue in them to really care.

 

His eyes flit toward her mouth and she holds her breath in anticipation.

 

_About bloody time._

He leans in a fraction of an inch and she tilts her head ever-so-slightly in hopes of encouraging him to take the plunge.

 

And then the door swings open, Skye bustling in with her arms full of shopping bags and a chatty blonde behind her.

 

“Fitz?” the Amazonian asks.

 

“Bob?” he responds, scrambling away from Jemma like she’s on fire.

 

“Jemma,” Skye states with a lascivious grin. “Were we interrupting something?”

 

“No!” Fitz exclaims, just as Jemma rolls her eyes.

 

“Yes.”

 

She turns to stare at him, hurt rising up in her chest. His mouth hangs open and he shakes himself.

 

“I’ve actually got to go,” he says. He stands quickly and snatches up his schematics, practically running for the door. Bobbi stares at Jemma and then back toward Fitz.

 

“Hey, Fitz, wait,” Bobbi tries, but he’s already gone.

 

An uncomfortable silence descends on the three women, and the blonde smiles tentatively at the despondent scientist sitting on the floor.

 

“Hi,” she greets. “I’m Bobbi.”

 

“Hunter introduced us last night,” Skye explains. “In case you were wondering, our suspicions were correct. She’s way too good for him.”

 

Jemma doesn’t even have it in her to crack a smile. She stands up and goes to her room, shutting the door behind her with a soft click.

 

**[9. Six Weeks Since Move-In]**

It’s Jemma’s turn to avoid him. She feels silly and pathetic for having thought that there was something between them. At most, he considers them friends—that much is apparent to her now.

 

So she sends Skye up to his floor to get the mail and altogether avoids him whenever possible. She looks the other way when she sees him across the street and starts leaving earlier for work, before he’s outside watering the plants.

 

Which is why she’s so startled when she opens her door and sees him pacing in the hallway just outside of it. It’s barely 7:00 in the morning, and he’d once told her how much he hated to get up early.

 

“Jemma,” he says, looking surprised to see her there. She rolls her eyes—he’s standing right out front of her apartment and yet is shocked to see her come out of it. “Hey.”

 

“Hi, Fitz,” she says dully. She adjusts her travel mug in one hand and hauls her bag over her shoulder with the other. “Can I help you with something?”

 

His mouth opens and then shuts, and he grimaces in that way he does when he’s trying to think of what to say.

 

“I was just coming to check the uh—the carbon monoxide detectors?”

 

She could let this flimsy excuse slide, but she’s not really in the mood to. “At 7:00 in the morning?”

 

He scratches behind his ear and she waits patiently for any kind of response.

 

“I—didn’t realize how early it was. I’ll come back later.”

 

“Fitz,” she says, stopping him in his tracks. “Why were you really here?”

 

“I—I felt bad, about the other day,” he tells her awkwardly. “I shouldn’t have—I left really abruptly.”

 

Jemma straightens her shoulders. “No, you shouldn’t have. You left me quite confused.”

 

He nods, eyes downcast. “Yeah, I just—I didn’t expect to see Bobbi and I want to keep—I haven’t told my friends about trying to—to get back into engineering.”

 

Suddenly her anger at him melts into shame. She’d been so self-centered that she’d assumed his embarrassment and haste had something to do with getting caught in a near-kiss with her. She hadn’t even considered his schematics laid out all over her coffee table.

 

“Oh, Fitz,” she sighs, equal parts fond and exasperated. “You should have just _told_ me that.”

 

“I—I—“ he stammers, pinching at the bridge of his nose in frustration. She can’t help it; she moves close to him and brushes her fingers against his shaking hand. He stares down at the action and she nearly retreats until his bad hand captures hers.

 

“Take your time,” she murmurs softly. He opens his eyes and blinks at her slowly, as though he’s just waking up.

 

“I don’t like to talk about it,” he finally gets out. “Especially with—with you.”

 

She inhales sharply against the sting of his words. “But why?”

 

“I don’t—I don’t want to disappoint you,” he shrugs, swallowing hard. The last of her resolve melts and she knocks her mug against his head when she throws her arms around him.

 

“Don’t be silly, Fitz,” she murmurs into his neck. His arms raise up slowly to wrap around her shoulders.

 

“Sorry,” he says into her hair.

 

She pulls back and swats at him. “Stop that. I’ve got to head to work but I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

 

He smiles brightly, looking intensely relieved. “Yeah, definitely.”

 

She shoots him a grin of her own and heads for the door, off to work for the day. She gets more done in the lab than she has since that afternoon in her apartment.

 

**[10. Six Weeks, Six Days Since Move-In]**

Following their conversation in the hall, she spends her evenings after dinner in his apartment. They bicker over his designs, dueling with penciled sketches on long sheets of paper pinned to his blank walls.

 

It’s the most fun she’s had in a very long time, and Skye doesn’t even comment on how late she comes home.

 

And while it’s incredibly fun, and intellectually stimulating, she can’t help but want to be stimulated by him in other, less scientific ways when he starts building prototypes out of scrap metal. She’s fascinated by his hands and the way his tongue darts out to wet his lips when he concentrates.

 

By the fifth night of this, it’s too much for her. It’s not just that she wants to jump his poor unsuspecting bones; it’s that she feels so horribly guilty for it. He seems to really appreciate her help with his project, and even though she catches him staring at her a few times, she’s accepted the fact that he likes her as a partner, as a friend.

 

He’s been through so much, and he’s fighting to bring himself back to where he was before. She’s not going to do anything to compromise that for him, because as much as she wants his hands in her hair and her tongue in his mouth, she mostly wants him to be happy.

 

So she urges herself to keep it absolutely professional. She stops touching him altogether, even when his hand starts to shake and she tells him to take a break. She doesn’t call him first and she never shows up to his apartment unannounced.

 

It’s a good system, she thinks, but it also _sucks._

So on the sixth night, she tells him she can’t come over to work and instead goes out to the pub with Hunter and Skye. Bobbi joins them and keeps shooting Jemma significant looks that make her uncomfortable.

 

By her third drink, Jemma has enough confidence to do something about it.

 

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Jemma demands.

 

“Sorry,” Bobbi cringes. “It’s just—I see why he likes you. You seem like you’d make a good couple, that’s all.”

 

There’s only one guy at their table, and Jemma looks at Hunter with thinly veiled disgust. “Me and _Hunter?”_

“You don’t have to sound so bloody affronted about it,” Hunter grumbles. “She meant Fitz, you silly bird.”

 

Jemma shakes her head vigorously. “No, no, no. Fitz and I are _friends._ That’s all. Even though I would quite like to put my mouth all over his mouth and his other bits.”

 

Skye splutters out a shocked laugh and reaches up a hand for a high-five. “Hell yeah, other bits!”

 

Bobbi can barely hide her smile. “How do you know he’s not interested in _your_ other bits?”

“If he was, he’d have done something about them,” Jemma says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve given him lots of opportunities to see my other bits and he has made no such efforts to—to be a part of that business.”

 

Hunter snorts. “I think it’s just been too long since _anyone_ was a part of that business. You’ve forgotten what signals look like.”

 

Jemma glares at her. “I know how to make it happen! I’ve still got it!”

 

Skye and Hunter exchange a dubious look that ignites Jemma’s naturally competitive edge, and she stands from the table rather forcefully.

 

“You don’t believe me,” she pouts. “Well, watch.”

 

She hears Bobbi smack Hunter as she sets off toward a rather chiseled looking gentleman at a table in the corner. “Hunter, you dumbass. This was _not_ the plan.”

 

“You two wouldn’t _tell me_ the plan,” Hunter reminds her, pointing between her and Skye. Jemma, meanwhile, has reached the lumberjack-looking man and tapped him on the shoulder. Her friends watch as she tosses her hair and introduces herself in a voice that sounds much higher pitched than her natural tone.

 

“Fitz is almost here,” Bobbi hisses to Skye. “What do we do?”

 

Skye sits back and crosses her arms, watching her roommate thoughtfully as she giggles far too loudly at what Skye can only assume was a horrible joke.

 

“We wait,” Skye decides.

 

Bobbi shakes her head. “A jealous Fitz is not going to be a good thing.”

 

“When Jemma was jealous of _you,_ they wound up on a date,” Skye tells her confidently. “So I think we’ll be fine.”

 

Bobbi persists in her argument. “Fitz isn’t Jemma, though. He’s just going to totally clam up forever if he sees her flirting with some Man Hulk.”

 

“Too late,” Hunter cringes. He nods toward the door, where Fitz appears, wringing his hands a bit nervously. He’s not really one to go out, especially since the accident, but Bobbi’s promise that Jemma would also be there had given him the push he needed to get out of his apartment.

 

“Does he ever wear anything other than flannel?” Skye asks. Bobbi glares at her and jumps up.

 

“I’m going to distract him. Get Jemma away from that guy, would you?”

 

Skye salutes her and jumps to her feet as well. “I’m on it.”

 

All she has to do is walk over, insert herself between Jemma and The Lumberjack, and point toward the door.

 

“Hey Jem, look who’s here.”

 

Her roommate’s face lights up like a Christmas tree and she doesn’t even spare a second glance at The Lumberjack before she’s making her way toward the front of the bar.

 

“Fitz!” she exclaims excitedly. “Hi!”

 

“Hey,” he greets, stumbling back a bit when she pulls him in for a quick hug. “How are you?”

 

“Drunk!” she chirps.

 

“I’ve got to catch up, then,” he laughs. She nods eagerly and grabs him by the arm to pull him toward the bar. Bobbi and Skye watch them go.

 

“That was close,” Bobbi says.

 

“Too close,” Skye agrees. “Let’s just hope that they get it together tonight. I can’t think of anything in my apartment that I haven’t already broken.”

 

Bobbi barks out a laugh and nods toward the bar. “I think we both deserve another drink.”

 

Skye smirks. “On Hunter?”

 

“Oh, absolutely.”

 

It ends up being the best night that Jemma’s had in a long time. She and Fitz play darts, talk about things _other_ than just science, and by the time he’s ordering his third beer, his hand keeps wandering to her lower back, thumb drawing little circles on her hip. She keeps her muscles loose every time he does this, lest he think that she wants him to stop. They hardly interact with their other friends at all, and eventually Skye leaves to meet up with Trip at another bar. Bobbi and Hunter stick around for a while longer, but they take off as well.

 

“Should we head back?” Fitz suggests. He glances at his watch. “It’s almost one.”

 

Jemma nods a bit too eagerly and loops her arm through his. “Let’s go.”

 

Their walk home is peaceful, full of contented silence and the occasional almost-whispered comment. The closer they get to their building, the tenser Fitz’s arm feels underneath hers. Just as they reach their destination, she takes a breath to ask him about it—and finds herself pressed up against the door. He kisses her firmly and fervently, nothing like what she would have expected from her quiet handyman engineer, and she immediately responds in earnest.

 

She’s not sure how long they stand outside, making out against the front of their building like a couple of teenagers, but her hands start to get cold against his neck and he pulls away from her with bleary eyes and a tired smile.

 

“We should get you inside,” he says, fumbling with the lock on the door. He holds it open and she slips in, fully intending on joining him in his apartment.

 

But he suddenly looks self-conscious, a strange expression settling over his face. He presses a fast, chaste kiss on her cheek.

 

“Goodnight, Jemma.”

 

And then he runs up the stairs to his apartment, leaving her watching after him in confusion, lips still tingling.

 

**[11. Seven Weeks, 2 Days Since Move-In]**

She’s had it. She’s absolutely, completely had it with Leopold fucking Fitz.

 

She’d decided to give him 72 hours after the kiss to get his shit together and ask her on a proper date, only he hasn’t. He hasn’t even spoken to her, and Jemma Simmons has always been known for her initiative. She’s a self-motivator, and there’s not a single reason why she has to wait for him to be the one to do something about all of this.

 

So she paces her apartment and catalogues every single thing that she could break to have an excuse to call him. She may be making the move here, but that doesn’t mean she has to be so _obvious_ about it.

 

The only problem is that Skye has already broken practically everything that wouldn’t cost a lot of money for him to fix, and she can’t just repeat the same broken appliances. He’ll be immediately suspicious and her move is all about the element of surprise.

 

Jemma thinks back to the night with the mouse. Her first instinct had been to put a hole in the wall with the hammer—she could pretend to be hanging a picture, right? And she’s sure that he has some drywall in his apartment for that very reason. Patching up a hole is fairly cheap and simple, and it’ll give her an excuse to lure him here. She grabs the hammer out of their poorly-stocked tool drawer (Jemma is fairly certain that Skye has slowly been removing and hiding certain screwdrivers so that she’ll have to call Fitz if she ever needs one).

 

She chooses her spot, just above the book shelf, and winds her arm back to smash a hole into the wall.

 

Just before the hammer makes contact, she jerks her hand back.

 

“This is ridiculous,” she huffs. She grabs her keys off of the hook on the wall, not even bothering to put on shoes, and storms upstairs to Fitz’s door. She bangs on it incessantly until he opens it, looking incredibly disoriented. For some reason, the sight of him in one of his stupid, never-buttoned-quite-right, _incredibly sexy_ flannel shirts makes her furious.

 

“Je—Jemma.”

 

“You!” she seethes. She waves the hammer clenched in her fist wildly. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

 

“What?” he gapes. “Why do you have a hammer?”

 

“You’ve made me _crazy,”_ she rants. “I nearly just put a _hole_ in my perfectly good, perfectly _functional,_ wall. I was a normal, well-adjusted adult woman and then I met _you_!”

 

He’s blinking rapidly, trying to catch up with whatever is occurring in front of him while also eying the flying hammer wearily.

 

“I released a radioactive mouse!” she shrieks. “I haven’t even _tried_ to stop Skye from breaking nearly _everything!_ She’s become like a human earthquake and I’ve let her carry on. I didn’t even confront Hunter about tampering with my bloody car, and do you want to know why?”

 

He doesn’t say anything, so she continues after sucking in a deep breath. “Because I’m completely mad about you. I’ve taken every single excuse I can to see you, and every time that I think you might just be mad about me, too, you scamper off into your apartment and hide from me. But that ends now.”

 

“Jemma—“

 

“No. Stop. Let me—let me finish,” she manages to get out. She’s practically panting, her breath coming out in short little gasps from the exertion of her speech and from her absolute terror at the possibility of ruining everything. But she has to try, because she can’t stand a second longer of this limbo. “I _really_ like you, and I have since the first day that Skye broke that drawer so that we would meet. And you kissed me, and that has to _mean_ something. I _felt_ it. So—so you have to make your decision right now. You have to choose if you want something more between us than science and fixing my things when Skye inevitably breaks every last one of them, or not.”

 

Her chest is heaving and her eyes are alight. He watches her carefully, trembling hand reaching toward her before returning back to his side.

 

“Are you…can I talk now?” he asks cautiously.

 

She nods sharply and he takes a deep breath.

 

“Of course I like you,” he rasps. “How could I—how could I not? I mean, even though you let a radioactive mouse loose and locked yourself out when you were drunk and even though you keep stealing my pencils—“

 

“I do not!”

 

“You do,” he says firmly, giving her a warning look. “Who’s turn is it?”

 

“Yours,” she mumbles.

 

“It’s just—I’m not—you’re fucking brilliant, and beautiful, and funny, and charming, and downright weird sometimes. And I’m—I’m damaged.”

 

“Fitz—“

 

“I know that I’m getting better,” he tells her before she can protest. “I’m getting—I’m getting closer to where I used to be and I didn’t want—I just want to be at my best. For you. That’s—that’s all.”

 

“But you kissed me,” she argues.

 

“I know,” he groans, palming at his eyes. “And it was perfect, of course it was, because everything about you is perfect, but I wanted to wait. I wanted to be—I wanted to be one hundred percent.”

 

“Fitz,” she says gently. “I’ve done the research. You may not ever _be_ one hundred percent again.”

 

“I know that!” he explodes, dropping his hands from his face. He screws up his face. “I’m sorry. It’s just—that’s part of the whole point.”

 

“I don’t care if you’re one hundred percent, is what I’m saying,” she amends. “I really don’t. I just want to see where this can go, because we’re twice as smart together and whenever something exciting happens or even when something bad happens, you’re the first person I want to tell. Any day that I don’t see you is just—it’s no good. So if you don’t want me, then that’s fine. I’ll still help you with your drones and be your friend and your neighbor, but—“

 

He surges forward, cupping her face in his hands as he kisses her just as he had 72 hours before. He takes her off guard and she drops the hammer out of her hand in surprise. It falls directly onto his sock-clad foot and he yelps, pulling away from her.

 

“Did you just _literally_ put the hammer down on me?” he snickers when he recovers from the pain. She rolls her eyes and looks at him expectantly.

 

“So, Fitz, what’ll it be?”

 

He tugs her into his apartment and slams the door shut, pressing her up against it.

 

“Of course I want you,” he whispers before he captures her lips again. She pushes him back until they reach the bedroom and she finally, _finally,_ gets what she’s wanted for six whole weeks.

 

In the morning, she has a text from Skye.

 

_[Skye]: I’m really happy for you but friendly reminder that my bedroom is directly below his. I’ve heard things I cannot unhear._

When Skye gets home from work that evening, there’s a packet of earplugs on her bed with an attached post-it note.

 

_Skye,_

_Please stop breaking things. I’d hate for the maintenance phone to wake up my new girlfriend in the middle of the night._

_-_ _Fitz_

 

Skye beams, tossing the earplugs into her drawer and basking in her success. She’s completely unsurprised when Jemma comes home hours later, wearing a flannel shirt and a huge smile.


End file.
